News from the Library of Congress

May 25, 2005

James M. Goldgeier Named Henry Alfred Kissinger Scholar in Foreign Policy and International Relations

Goldgeier Begins Residency at Kluge Center in September 2005

James M. Goldgeier, professor of political science and director of the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University and an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, has been appointed Henry Alfred Kissinger Scholar in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the Library of Congress by Librarian of Congress James H. Billington, effective September 2005.

Goldgeier is the fifth scholar to occupy the Kissinger chair since the position was created in 2000 by friends of the former secretary of state to honor him and emphasize the importance of foreign affairs. Previous chair holders were Aaron Friedberg, director of the research program in international security and acting director of the Center of International Studies at Princeton University; Klaus Larres, Jean Monnet Professor, European Foreign and Security Policy at the School of Politics, Queen’s University of Belfast, Northern Ireland; Lanxin Xiang, professor of international history and politics at the Institut universitaire de hautes études internationales in Geneva; and Melvyn Leffler, dean of the faculty of arts and sciences and Edward Stettinius Professor of American History at the University of Virginia.

The Kissinger chair program offers outstanding thinkers and practitioners a unique opportunity to pursue advanced research in the largest and most international collection of library materials in the world. As occupant of the Kissinger chair at the Library’s John W. Kluge Center, Goldgeier will focus on what he perceives as a growing division between the European Union and NATO and the former Soviet Union, while exploring policy options that the United States and its European partners might have in responding to this new divide.

An expert on U.S. relations with Europe and Russia, Goldgeier received his bachelor’s degree in government from Harvard University and his master’s and doctorate in political science

from the University of California at Berkeley. Before his appointment at George Washington University in 1994, he served on the faculty at Cornell University and was a visiting research fellow at Stanford University. In 1995-96, Goldgeier was a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow at the State Department and the National Security Council. From 1998 to 1999, he was a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Goldgeier’s major publications are "Leadership Style and Soviet Foreign Policy: Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev," (1994), winner of the Edgar S. Furniss award for best book by a first-time author in the field of national and international security; "Not Whether but When: The U.S. Decision to Enlarge NATO" (1999); and "Power and Purpose: U.S. Policy Toward Russia After the Cold War" (2003), for which he and co-author Michael McFaul of Stanford University won Georgetown University’s Lepgold Prize in 2004.

Through a generous endowment from John W. Kluge, the Library of Congress established the Kluge Center in 2000 to bring together the world’s best thinkers to stimulate and energize public discussion, distill wisdom from the Library’s rich resources and interact with policymakers in Washington. The Kluge Center houses five senior Kluge Chairs, other senior-level chairs and postdoctoral fellows.

For more information about the Henry Alfred Kissinger Chair or any of the other fellowships and programs offered by the John W. Kluge Center, contact the Office of Scholarly Programs, Library of Congress, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, DC 20540-4860; telephone (202) 707-3302, fax (202) 707-3595. Or visit the center’s Web site at www.loc.gov/kluge.